The present invention relates to musical performance assistance devices and methods for use in practice of a music piece.
In music education, it is essential and important to mater musical scales. Thus, there has heretofore been known a method for mastering musical scales, which uses a music board provided with: a keyboard section simulating a keyboard; and a musical staff notation section simulating a musical staff. The music board is constructed to allow a user to master a musical scale by not only illuminating on the keyboard section each key depressed on a keyboard musical instrument but also illuminating on the musical staff notation section a note indicative of a pitch (i.e., tone pitch) corresponding to the depressed key. For example, Japanese Utility Model Publication No. SHO-63-4226 (hereinafter referred to as “Patent Literature 1”) discloses such a music board.
However, because the music board is a training material intended for assistance in musical scale mastering, it is constructed to merely display correspondence relationship between the keys and positions, on the staff, of pitches corresponding to the keys; in other words, it is never associated with a performance of a music piece. To repeat practicing of a music performance using such a music board would not be much fun to the user. Further, with the practice using the music board, the user cannot be expected to appropriately master a performance of a music piece and master how to read a musical score.
Further, a performance guide function in an electronic keyboard musical instrument etc. has been known as a method for mastering a performance of a music piece. The performance guide function is designed to illuminate keys to be depressed to perform the music piece and display notes and fingering on a display section. However, such a performance guide function is arranged to automatically advance a position to be practiced of the music piece in accordance with a predetermined reproduction tempo or in response to a key depressing operation. Namely, the illumination of keys to be depressed and the display of notes to be performed are executed only for a position to be currently performed on the basis of a progression of the music piece, i.e., only for a particular portion of the music piece. For example, “Owner's Manual of YAMAHA Digital Keyboard EZ 220” (in English) and “Owner's Manual of YAMAHA Portatone EZ J220” (in Japanese) both published by YAMAHA Corporation in 2012 (hereinafter referred to as “Non-patent Literature 1”) discloses such a performance guide function.